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JERUSALEM — War has left Gaza littered with unexploded bombs that will take years to clear, with children drawn to metal casings maimed or even killed when they try to pick them up, a demining expert said.

Nicholas Orr, a former UK military deminer, told AFP after a mission to the war-battered Palestinian territory that "we're losing two people a day to UXO [unexploded ordnance] at the moment."

According to Orr, most of the casualties are children out of school desperate for something to do, searching through the rubble of bombed-out buildings sometimes for lack of better playthings.

"They're bored, they're running around, they find something curious, they play with it, and that's the end," he said.

Among the victims was 15-year-old Ahmed Azzam, who lost his leg to an explosive left in the rubble as he returned to his home in the southern city of Rafah after months of displacement.

"We were inspecting the remains of our home and there was a suspicious object in the rubble," Azzam told AFP.

"I didn't know it was explosive, but suddenly it detonated," he said, causing "severe wounds to both my legs, which led to the amputation of one of them."

He was one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returning home during a truce that brought short-lived calm to Gaza after more than 15 months of war, before Israel resumed its bombardment and military operations last month.

For Azzam and other children, the return was marred by the dangers of leftover explosives.

 'Attractive to kids' 

Demining expert Orr, who was in Gaza for charity Handicap International, said that while no one is safe from the threat posed by unexploded munitions, children are especially vulnerable.

Some ordnance is like "gold to look at, so they're quite attractive to kids", he said.

"You pick that up and that detonates. That's you and your family gone, and the rest of your building."

Another common scenario involved people back from displacement, said Orr, giving an example of "a father of a family who's moved back to his home to reclaim his life, and finds that there's UXO in his garden".

"So he tries to help himself and help his family by moving the UXO, and there's an accident."

With fighting ongoing and humanitarian access limited, little data is available, but in January the UN Mine Action Service said that "between five and 10 percent" of weapons fired into Gaza failed to detonate.

It could take 14 years to make the coastal territory safe from unexploded bombs, the UN agency said.

Alexandra Saieh, head of advocacy for Save The Children, said unexploded ordnance is a common sight in the Gaza Strip, where her charity operates.

"When our teams go on field they see UXOs all the time. Gaza is littered with them," she said.

 'Numbers game' 

For children who lose limbs from blasts, "the situation is catastrophic", said Saieh, because "child amputees require specialised long-term care... that's just not available in Gaza".

In early March, just before the ceasefire collapsed, Israel blocked all aid from entering Gaza. That included prosthetics that could have helped avoid long-term mobility loss, Saieh said.

Unexploded ordnance comes in various forms, Orr said. In Gaza's north, where ground battles raged for months, there are things like "mortars, grenades, and a lot of bullets".

In Rafah, where air strikes were more intense than ground combat, "it's artillery projectiles, it's airdrop projectiles", which can often weigh dozens of kilograms, he added.

Orr said he was unable to obtain permission to conduct bomb disposal in Gaza, as Israeli aerial surveillance could have mistaken him for a militant attempting to repurpose unexploded ordnance into weapons.

He also said that while awareness-raising could help Gazans manage the threat, the message doesn't always travel fast enough.

"People see each other moving it and think, 'Oh, they've done it, I can get away with it,'" Orr said, warning that it was difficult for a layperson to know which bombs might still explode, insisting it was not worth the risk.

"You're just playing against the odds, it's a numbers game."

Gaza City, Palestinian Territories — Gaza's civil defence agency said at least 25 people were killed Thursday in an Israeli air strike on a school serving as a shelter for people displaced by the war.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP the death toll had risen to 25, with more than 100 others wounded in the strike on Dar al-Arqam School in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood, northeast of Gaza City.

Meanwhile, Hamas has rejected the latest Israeli proposal on a Gaza truce, two officials from the movement told AFP on Wednesday.

"Hamas has decided not to follow up on the latest Israeli proposal presented through the mediators" said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, and accusing Israel of "blocking a proposal from Egypt and Qatar and trying to derail any agreement".

A UN aid official said on Wednesday that the mass grave in Rafah where the bodies of 15 medics were found after the Israeli army fired on ambulances illustrates the "war without limits" that Israel is leading in Gaza.

"It was shocking" to see medical workers "still in their uniforms, still wearing gloves, killed while trying to save lives," said Jonathan Whittall, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Palestinian territories.

"The ambulances were hit one by one," he said in a video conference after a mission to Gaza uncovered the mass grave. Of the 15 bodies, eight were members of the Palestinian Red Crescent and one was from the United Nations.

UN chief Antonio Guterres also expressed revulsion Wednesday at the killings.

"The secretary-general is shocked by the attacks of the Israeli army on a medical and emergency convoy on March 23 resulting in the killings of 15 medical personnel and humanitarian workers in Gaza," spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a briefing.

OCHA said Tuesday that the first team of first aid workers was killed by Israeli forces on March 23, and that other emergency and aid teams were hit one after another over several hours while searching for their missing colleagues.

After several weeks of ceasefire in Gaza, Israel resumed its bombardments on March 18 and announced Wednesday the extension of its military operations to seize "large areas" of the territory.

Whittall said 64 percent of Gaza is under displacement orders, and that 200,000 people have been uprooted since the end of the ceasefire.

He said the 25 bakeries run by the UN's World Food Programme have been closed since Tuesday.

"It's an endless loop of blood, pain, death and Gaza has become a death trap," he said. "What is happening here defies decency, it defies humanity, it defies the law."

JUBA — Recent clashes between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar have raised fears that South Sudan is on the brink of renewed war.

The arrest of Machar last week was seen by some observers as the spark that could reignite the civil war that the rivals fought between 2013 and 2018 that killed some 400,000 people.

But others argue that the situation has changed considerably since the last conflict with new political struggles now centre-stage.

Succession 

Analysts say Kiir, 73, is struggling with health issues and has been seeking to ensure his succession and sideline Machar politically.

"The succession is the major issue in South Sudan, with President Kiir not in good health and people within his party and government trying to take over," a Juba-based humanitarian told AFP, requesting anonymity for security reasons.

Since February, more than 20 of Machar's political and military allies have been arrested, some held incommunicado.

In at least three states, governors loyal to Machar have been replaced by Kiir's allies, a move that violates the 2018 power-sharing agreement that ended the civil war.

"The president is operating as if there is no existing agreement," Daniel Akech, a researcher at the International Crisis Group, told AFP.

Akech fears Kiir's strategy amounts to "escalation after escalation", and that Machar's arrest marks a dangerous step towards war.

But the common framing of a struggle between Kiir and Machar may be outdated, said a Juba-based diplomat, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Machar has lost much popular support since joining the establishment in 2018, he said.

Many within Kiir's own party are angry that he appears to be positioning his former financial advisor, Benjamin Bol Mel, as his chosen successor, having made him a vice president earlier this year.

Bol Mel is widely "hated", according to the diplomat, and if Kiir leaves the country for medical treatment, as is highly possible, there could be an explosion of violence. 

Many believe that if the president entrusts the reins of power to Bol Mel "there will be an immediate coup d'etat", said the diplomat.

Rising conflict 

The tensions have spilt over into conflict in several areas, often with an ethnic element. 

In northeastern Upper Nile State, a militia of youths mainly from the Nuer community, known as the White Army, overran a military base in early March. 

The military responded by shelling nearby areas, killing 20 people, mostly women and children, according to an administrative commissioner in Nasir County.

The fighting has already displaced more than 60,000 people, according to the UN.

Clashes have occurred in other areas, including airstrikes that have targeted Machar's forces near the capital Juba. 

Money and soldiers 

South Sudan, already one of the world's poorest nations, has faced a financial crisis over the past year after the war in neighbouring Sudan ended oil exports through one of its pipelines. 

Oil has accounted for some 90 percent of government revenue. Production plunged from 140,000 to 20,000 barrels per day, the diplomat said.

The loss of funds means soldiers have gone largely unpaid for over a year, beyond the recent dispersal of a few months' wages.

The arrival of Ugandan forces in early March to support Kiir fuelled further discontent after rumours they were being paid in dollars, the diplomat added.

There has been only limited progress towards unifying the armies of Kiir and Machar, as mandated under the 2018 peace deal. 

The widespread discontent could, Akech warns, lead some armed groups to break away from the control of the traditional leaders, leading to "decentralised violence".